St. John's University Law Faculty Blog

Professor Marc O. DeGirolami’s essay, Substantial Burdens Imply Central Beliefs, has been published by the University of Illinois Law Review Online in its symposium on “substantial burdens” and religious free exercise. Here is the abstract.

Any society that is open to religious accommodation will want to know about the quality of the burden its laws impose on religious belief and exercise. This short essay reflects on the nature of that inquiry. It argues that to speak of a substantial burden on religion is by implication to understand religion as constituted by a system, within which certain beliefs and exercises occupy different positions of relative importance or centrality.